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Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by YeGoblynQueenne on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:54PM (#26056666)
Are you sure this is the case, about the Austrian Independents? It's not very clear from the wikipedia articles on the persons and on the institutions.

In any case, it looks like the Austrian ministers are figurheads without real political power, or so I gather from the relevant artice on wikipedia:

Austrian presidents gladly accept that their role is that of figureheads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Austria

But I may not be reading all this carefully enough. Still, this seems to be something ... peculiar to Austria?

Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by tom_mellior on Sunday February 07, 2021 @01:59PM (#26057183)
You misread "president" as "minister" and ignored the fact that (at least) Italy often has expert cabinets, and this whole discussion is pointless anyway since at most what we would be able to establish is that the EU Commission's democratic legitimacy, if any, is through three levels of indirection, which is not a lot of legitimacy.
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by YeGoblynQueenne on Sunday February 07, 2021 @02:20PM (#26057365)
I did indeed misread "president" as "minister", but I don't agree with you that "indirection" (i.e. appointment of officials by elected officials) is "not a lot of legitimacy". It may not be "a lot of directness", but I'm not concerned about this any more than I'm concerned that, e.g. police officers or judges are appointed, rather than elected (certainly in the places I've lived).

Edit: I don't agree that there is as much indirection as you say, either. You brought up two examples of interim governments where ministers were not elected. You haven't given any examples where this happens in er, ordinary? governments and I don't believe there are any in the EU. But I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.